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The day after Robby yells at Victoria Javadi, nothing changes. Her ponytail bounces high on her head as she trots by Trinity at the lockers, by all appearances ready to start another day. Excited, even. Her grip on the ungodly amalgamation she calls coffee is loose, distinctly lacking white knuckles, and a smile pokes dimples into her cheeks.
Yesterday, the medical student missed an abnormal iron level in a lab result that ended up being critical in diagnosis. A mistake, and a bad one. Her first in the ED, which had surely shaken the girl to her core. Trinity was about to tease her for this. To add some levity, maybe, or just to watch girl genius squirm. Maybe both. She was thinking something along the lines of “A nerd AND you need glasses? Woof, tough break”, though she was still mentally workshopping. Just as she had parted her lips to speak, their attending, full of less and less unusual sourness, snapped his head around and let it spill.
The department eased away from him like always. Some nights after a particularly rough shift with no energy left to police her thoughts, she imagined the Pitt as a river washing stones, and Robby a particularly powerful current. Reactions and defenses slowly wear down to smooth pebbles underneath, jagged edges filtered off under constant pressure. The torrent of Robby’s wrath passed over Javadi before trickling over the rest of the ED. The girl nodded, dark eyes down, and replied with a simple, polished, “I’ll be more careful next time, Doctor Robby. My apologies.”
Trinity’s eyes darted left to Doctor Mohan, who stood with her arms crossed. Samira normally showed her jagged edges most during these kinds of outbursts from her superiors. An advocate for patients and doctors alike, she had spoken up on more than one occasion. But right now, she has one foot out the door and could only muster a flare of her nostrils, then a sympathetic hand on Javadi’s arm after Dana the wavebreaker whisked Robby away for a talk. It was done almost before Trinity could process it had happened.
“Thanks, Samira, but I’m good,” Javadi had said, giving the hand a friendly pat to dismiss it and grinning to clinch the deal. Her eyes crinkled and the apples of her cheeks went round. Real, reassuring.
The moment clung humid in the air. Then, no longer under water, the noise and chaos of the ER returned. Dry land, ho. The nurses, residents, and medical students scattered in all directions and life continued on.
So Trinity finds herself stuck in the locker room, jacket halfway on the hook, trying not to outright stare at Twilight Sparkle sipping on her mocha-cookie-crumble-whatever.
Trinity can bear the brunt of direct anger. She is a boulder the size of a car sunk to the bottom of this damn river, unmoving, smoothed down more because of it. When Langdon lashed out at her on her first day, she let him. The tide came, her jaw clenched and she rooted herself in place and then it was over. This blase attitude had served her well. If it came out later in moody snips, that was neither here nor there. Trinity Santos is solid when it counts, thank you very much.
So how was Crash, who dropped like a sack of rocks on her first case and wrinkles her nose at a silly nickname, so unaffected? Not just unaffected - quite possibly radiating sunshine out of her ass?
Sourness churns in her own gut as the day progresses. Like fucked up attending, like fucked up second-year resident. She tries to shuck it off, but can’t help scrutinizing the med student from the corner of her eye as she orbits around the nursing station. Javadi skips around with her confidence in tact. No one in the ED gives Javadi extra glances or coos at her.
Trinity does not care. She is not giving Victoria special attention. It’s just that her skill as a doctor relies on particularly keen instincts and perception. Dots connect whether she wants them to or not. And while these particular dots leave a pit in her stomach, they connect anyway.
Trinity was thirteen. Jasmine had been doing gymnastics since she was five, was taller than her, and stronger than her. The other girl was in every way what Trinity wanted to be when she grew up - though Jasmine was also thirteen and, in fact, six months younger. What Jasmine had on her was more important and elusive to a young girl than age. She had confidence like it was the blood that flowed under her skin. So natural, she never seemed to have lived without it. It was Jas who Trinity watched when her mother took her on that first tour the gym. Trinity was supposed to be paying attention while mother spoke to the coach and gave them both a rundown of the details and requirements of the sport. Already struggling to focus, a sound drew her attention across the room. A girl stood far away, unassuming in her sparkling leotard, in front of an instructor with several yards of space behind her on the mat. She was bent over with a hand on her stomach, letting loose a belly laugh. The instructor rolled her eyes, equal parts amused and annoyed. The girl’s hand came up to exaggeratedly wipe at her eyes before she suddenly straightened, paused, and fell backward into a perfect back handspring. Right then, jaw hanging open, Trinity Santos was sold.
Gymnastics was a random choice on her mother’s part. Something to get her out of the house, drain her energy, teach her discipline, stop her from being too angry and too loud.
Ironic.
It did humble Trinity some - she was a fawn on the mat at first, even if she did eventually come into her talent. Limbs sprawled beyond her control. Even simple stretches left her leery. Trinity sat and watched, smelling sweaty feet as she sunk into the vinyl after a second or fifth or twentieth failed attempt. Gymnasts around her, Jasmine particularly, performed perfect, practiced moves. In her bitterness, she thought perhaps the girl was so confident because she sucked it from others like a vampire. She was aware the thought was cringy. Overtired and sulking, she indulged it anyway. Trinity had seen every Twilight movie with mother, before the tides had turned on their relationship and she was still Ma, and Trinity was still sweetheart or iha.
An instructor plucked Trinity from the mat to practice a handstand one final time. Eager to prove herself, cutting a glance at Jasmine nearby, Trinity started entirely too fast without preparing to hold her weight in her upper body. For one golden moment she held herself up before inexperience caught up with her and she came swinging right back down. Her body thudded to the mat, sound exaggerated by the whoosh of air from her lungs. As she lied there with her eyes closed, she contemplated the likelihood of death by humiliation and estimated 98, 99 percent.
A shadow eclipsed the light shining through her eyelids. She cracked one open. Close now, she could see that Jasmine’s smile held crooked teeth, that her hair sprung out of her bun in random sprays, and her hand was stretched to help her up. She was also laughing at her.
“Get up, newb. You look like my three year old sister when she pouts.”
Trinity blew a strand of hair out of her own face and lifted her head to glare at the other gymnast. “I’m resting, not pouting. Heard of it?”
“That’s crazy because you could actually see your tantrum from space.”
Trinity sputtered. Couldn’t think of anything smart to say, so she said something dumb instead. “Could not!” she squawked as she stood without accepting the hand. Jasmine took it in stride and used the previously outstretched hand to give Trinity a gentle punch on the shoulder, ignoring the resulting “ow”.
“Been there, done that,” Jasmine assured, before getting into position to do a handstand of her own, “Let me show you how its done!”
Trinity was fourteen when she noticed the light go out in Jasmine’s eyes, just like hers had, every time she left the gym’s office. They never spoke of it, but almost never left each other’s side again.
Trinity was seventeen and going to a house party. This was far from the first Jas had dragged her to; she did not even bother to lie to her parents about where she was going anymore. Just left without a word and came home to a house with no heartbeat and zero missed calls. She slipped out the front door and hopped into the passenger seat of Jas’ car, anticipating another night drowning her life in underage drinking and music loud enough to burst her eardrums.
That night, though, Jas had an energy to her that Trinity hadn’t seen in years. As soon she slammed the door closed, Jas threw her arm around her and slopped a fat kiss to the side of her face.
Trinity wiped her cheek on the sleeve of her hoodie. “Eww, Jas, really? Gonna ban you from pregaming if it makes you this sappy.”
Jas beamed. “Sober as a nun, actually. Can’t I just be happy to see you?” She gave her a slug to the shoulder that was actually kind of hard. Always with the whiplash, this one.
It was the happiest Trinity had ever seen her. She made friends with every unfamiliar face, chased her shots with gulps of water and then wrung herself out on makeshift dance floor in the living room. Each of Trinity’s jokes landed hard, pulling that sparkling cackle from her best friend. The stones in her eyesockets had softened to brown pools and she moved like a mermaid in the orange light. She pulled everyone, including Trinity, in to dance.
Today, Trinity would have noticed the signs. Blown pupils, tachycardia, euphoria, excessive thirst, and an altered mental state. But teenage Trinity, so young, so stupid, so obliviously fucking in love, only saw that familiar smile that had grown rare. Still full of crooked teeth. And drank it like wine.
So, as it was, Jas collapsing on the floor seemed to come out of nowhere. Mid-movement, she stopped. Her eyes lost focus on Trinity, and she was suddenly on the floor. All noise leeched from the room before it was replaced by the sound of Jasmine’s pink sneakers bouncing and squeaking against the hardwood as she seized.
Trinity would spend the next eight hours hunched in a chair next to Jas’ hospital bed, pain blooming under her skin where she dug her nail into her thigh over and over. Each beep of the heart monitor punched into her ears. She could barely hear the doctor’s diagnosis. Jasmine tested positive for high levels of MDMA and had drug-induced hypernatremia, but would make a full recovery and be discharged within the week.
Five days after that, the night of her welcome home party, Jasmine took another kind of pill and left for good.
Trinity destroyed everything. Gifts, journals, her handful of other pathetic friendships. The only survivor was a DVD in an unmarked clear case that always ended up jammed between her bedframe and the wall, whether she was a teen in her parents’ house or in her apartment in her mid twenties. In the recording, two girls giggle and do flips and give high-fives at their first gymnastics meet forever. Trinity pulled it out when the scalpel was not enough.
“Crash, got an MVC coming in,” Trinity says, catching Victoria leaving the restroom. “Thought you might want to hop on seeing as it’s your area of expertise.”
Victoria looks up from straightening her scrubs. “ETA?”
Another non-reaction. Another pleasant grin on her face.
“Two minutes,” she replies. Victoria nods, then speeds ahead of her to wash and glove up. Trinity’s eyes follow on their own accord. As soon as she leaves her sightline, new footsteps rush behind her.
“Santos! You seen Javadi around?” McKay asks rounding the corridor, looking particularly flustered
“Just missed her. Got nabbed to help with an incoming trauma,” she says, “Better luck next time.”
“Damn. Wanted to follow up, I’ll catch her later. Thanks for the update,” McKay replies and turns to hurry back the way she came, harried by the demands of the job already at nine in the morning. Gotta love the ED.
Trinity shocks herself when her mouth opens again. “Uh, hold on, Doctor McKay?”
McKay turns her head, raises an eyebrow, “Hmm?”
Trinity shuffles a few steps toward the resident, ducking her head down to keep their conversation private.
“Have you noticed anything weird with Cra– Javadi?” she asks. As soon as the words leave her mouth, she flushes. This was silly. She was silly. Desperate for cover, she adds, “Other than the usual.”
McKay rolls her eyes skyward at the second comment, but Trinity does notice the twitch of her lip. McKay knows half of what Trinity says is play, even if she herself plays Switzerland. “I mean, no. She’s been doing great, very focused.” McKay closes her mouth before continuing with a sigh, “This probably isn’t even worth mentioning, but I did hear Joy complaining that she stopped posting on her TikTok account. It’s a shame, she was doing some good stuff on there advocating for mental health. She has been busy lately, though. Why?”
Going for casual, Trinity lets out a non-committal puff of air. “No reason. This place can just be… something else,” she replies, waving vaguely.
McKay, who had put the eyebrow down, raises it again. “You okay, kid?”
Trinity is caught off-guard and barks out a laugh. A few heads to turn at the noise. So much for privacy. “Kid?”
Trinity swears she catches a hint of embarrassment and defensiveness in McKay’s reply. “You’re all kids to me.”
“You’re forty, not the cryptkeeper, Jesus. And yeah, I’m good. What’s so strange about me checking in on a fellow medical professional?” If Trinity sounds a little defensive too, McKay has the decency to pretend not to notice. True neutral.
“Alright, alright,” McKay yields, though the brow continues floating on her face, “But really, Victoria is stronger than you think. It’d serve you well to stop underestimating her.”
When she gets home that night, Trinity violates a sacred vow to herself and makes a TikTok account.
She writes nothing in her bio and immediately looks up Doctor J. She already knows Victoria went viral, but it is something else to behold. Now that she was thinking about it, she had never seen Victoria outside of work. From her feed, it is clear that her perfectionism bleeds into her personal life. The lighting on her is curated in every thumbnail, her outfits trendy yet staying right on the edge of timeless. Even if it is the usual please-hear-my-intellect spilling from her lips, she looks nice. Trinity is a human being with eyes. Drawing an obvious conclusion is no crime. As she scrolls, she notes the likes and comments number in the tens of thousands. Her plot suddenly seems like flicking a drop into an ocean, but she has committed. Even verified her email address. She clicks on Doctor J’s most recent video, posted two weeks ago, and starts writing her comment before even watching. She is not here for entertainment. This is a mission to gather intel.
“do you have advice for burnout related to other doctors? I love my job but have been struggling with workplace hostility from an older male attending and have been experiencing some-”
What is this, an essay? She deletes what she had written so far and briefly studies the other comments before trying to emulate them.
“4 + 4 = ATEEEEE anyway how are you dr j”
The backspace must hurt after she hits it so hard. She decides to try one more time before blocking Doctor J, deleting the account and possibly even the email she used to make it.
“hi dr j! new follower - how do you deal with the pressure that comes from being a young woman in the er? im also a med student and am having a hard time”
It’s gonna have to do. She posts the comment and immediately flips her phone face down. Her treacherous heart and hands shake with nerves. Ridiculous, as Victoria will never see or respond to the comment anyway Even if she did, it’s just Crash. Kid genius, Twilight Sparkle, nepo-baby Crash.
What she doesn’t expect is to wake up to a DM from Doctor J herself.
She rolls over under the blanket and moves to turn off her alarm. When she does, a notification waits at the top of her screen.
“Saw your comment on my post, it can be a struggle! I make sure I lean on my family and friends to help me through (: Hope everything gets a little easier! 💜 ”
Trinity blinks at it a few times. What a little liar. She types a response before her eyes are even fully open.
“omg thank you for responding! unfortunately I have few friends and family to speak of,” Trinity ignores how close to home this actually hits, “is there anything else I can do? and is it hard to keep up with being a creator in your year? im scared I wont have time for my hobbies anymore”
Victoria responds immediately. Must have just woken up, too. Trinity tries to imagine her bed-headed and crusty-eyed but falls short.
“Hmm, it is a little hard. It doesn’t help that I usually talk about medical topics in my videos. I’ve been too busy to post lately, but I’m sure it would be easier to keep up with other hobbies unrelated to work. What do you do? (:”
“gymnastics. been doing it since I was thirteen”
Trinity does not know why she tells the truth. Thankfully, no one in the Pitt knows this particular Trinity Santos gem. Not even Dennis.
“Oh that’s awesome! I wish I did something cool like that instead of just posting on TikTok lol,” Victoria replies, then immediately starts typing again, “I wish I had better advice. Maybe try putting yourself out there? I’m sure the other med students and residents would love to get to know you ”
Barf. She ignores the second half of the message.
“oh like being tiktok famous isnt ‘something cool’ ok lmao”
The other typing bubble appears and disappears. Scared she already messed up, Trinity springs out of bed, throws on some clothes, and prepares breakfast before checking her phone again. Thankfully, there is a message waiting for her.
“See, you’re funny! Like I said, I’m sure you can make friends if you put yourself out there. In the meantime, feel free to message me 💟 "
And so it continues. Every night for two weeks, Trinity finds herself closing the door of her bedroom behind her, flinging herself onto her bed on her belly, and opening an app she swore she’d never download just to talk to Crash. Pathetic. It’s not that she doesn’t attempt to talk to Victoria in person. After the message advising her anonymous follower to reach out, Trinity tries to make it easy for her. Hangs around more. Jokes with her excessively. All to no avail.
So she DMs her. Dutifully and pitifully. Asks her favorite color, which she already knows is purple but wants to give Victoria the pleasure of sharing, tells her remixes of her actual experiences in medical school, listens to all of Victoria’s song recommendations.
When she’s feeling dangerous, she sends a message while they are both on shift. If she’s lucky, she catches Victoria sitting, charting or eating a protein bar or something, watches her feel the buzz in her pocket and check her phone. While her face has been impenetrable recently, the look she has as she shoots off a quick reply is genuine based on the way she hides it under her palm.
In their conversations, small things slip against her will. Maybe if Trinity had someone to talk to, a roommate who wasn’t miles away farm LARPing, a brother who wasn’t afraid to breathe in her direction lest she shatter, or a best friend who wasn’t mulch, she would not be oozing her heart out in her TikTok DMs. It is what it is.
The big thing slips eventually, the Jasmine-shaped thing, and Victoria is so sweet it aches.
“I’m sorry that happened. That’s a lot to go through. I’m here if you want to talk more about it”
“no need it was a long time ago. shouldn’t have even mentioned it to a stranger”
“I’d consider us friends”
“k. friends (:”
It comes crashing down, appropriately. Playing fast and loose was not a great idea. Trinity got comfortable, rolled over and left her soft belly exposed, begging for talons. It’s her slip-up, of course. Victoria finally opens up to her on a Tuesday evening. PTMC had pushed her to the brink that day, and Trinity watched it happen. Shamsi was down for a consult on one of her cases. Student doctor Javadi had been focused, smile on, and had been on the top of her game until then. Crash was crushing it. It did not make sense why Shamsi decided to ride her the way she did. The girl crumpled like wet paper.
“It’s not really that I don’t get along with my mom, she only pushes me because she sees my potential. I just wish sometimes that we didn’t work in the same field.”
Victoria had not told her ‘friend’ that she did not just work in the same field, but the same hospital, as her mother. Too embarrassed of any whiff of nepotism, if Trinity had to guess. Hiding even while baring her soul… game recognize game.
“I get it. mine was crazy when it came to gymnastics but outside of that i didnt exist”
“How did you cope with that?”
“drugs alcohol etc😬”
“Would you recommend?”
“NOPE.”
“Oh so she does know how to use capital letters and punctuation”
There’s that secret bite. God, Trinity loves when Victoria gives it back to her. It’s what she misses most about Victoria at work, the real one, not the one currently parading around the Pitt.
“when necessary,” she replies before adding, because she's stupidly sentimental when her face isn't attached, “but rly please don’t. I care about you. dont crash and burn on me”
“I’m trying not to.”
The messages lull for a moment. They must realize at the same time because right as Trinity’s stomach drops, Victoria’s typing bubble pops up.
“wait wtf is this trinity???”
Trinity turns her phone off and throws up.
Their next shared shift is brutal. Silver lining - Victoria’s pasted smile is finally gone. She scowls and snarls and snips at everyone around her. If Trinity wasn’t so sick to her stomach, she’d be proud. At hour nine after precariously avoiding each other, the red phone rings. The sinkhole opens up and sucks them all back in until it’s past ten at night. Every doctor has had each nerve peeled back and frayed individually. Most are too tired to even say goodbye, which, blissfully, gives Trinity the chance to slip away. Unfortunately, unbeknownst to her, she parked on the same level of the parking garage as Victoria that morning. When she steps out of the elevator, the other girl stands a few feet in front of her, facing away, staring at the only two cars left on that level. She’d been caught.
“I can’t even look at you,” Victoria says, turning. She keeps her word and looks everywhere but at her. If this were any other conversation, Trinity would ask her what she finds so interesting about the concrete. Her hands come up in front of her, palms out, a wall that Trinity feels in her chest as much as she sees. “When we made fun of each other I thought we were just… I don’t know! But this...prank-”
“We were! I wasn’t pranking you. I didn’t even mean for it to go this far,” Trinity insists. She fails to school the desperation in her words. Hates that pleading little voice. Please believe me, please see me, please understand, etcetera.
Victoria’s hands start to move. Trinity’s hope that the wall might break is dashed when she crosses them over her chest instead, bolstering her armor. “Yet, here we are. Was anything you said even true?”
“All of it.”
Somehow forcing out those three words is harder than anything else she had shared. She swallows afterward, trying to suck them back down, but only finds thick spit. She wishes she would choke on it.
In the absence of the spoken word, the garage lights buzz louder. Victoria eventually untucks one hand from her chest and gestures for her to continue. She makes fleeting eye contact, but withdraws when Trinity tries to hold it. Always a fuck up.
“I was worried about you. You’ve been different since that anemic patient,” Trinity says to Victoria Javadi’s shoes.
She hears, doesn’t see, Victoria scoff. “Yeah, I know the one. And I don’t need you, or anyone else, to worry about me.”
Trinity must make some kind of face, because something in Victoria’s composition breaks.
“Oh my god. It’s just a little Adderall, okay? Only recently and low dosage because obviously I read that study from the Pharmacy journal. It’s really not a big deal.” She hesitates a little before adding, “Gonna run to Robby now?”
It is a low blow, they both know, but as low as Trinity is already she hardly feels it.
“I’m just trying to be a good doctor. A great doctor,” Victoria continues. The untucked hand makes its way to her mouth and she chews a nail. “I shouldn’t have missed that result. I’m better than that.”
Rather than sympathy, Trinity feels that sour wave within her crest. “So you thought popping random pills would help?” Not what Victoria needs to hear right now and Trinity knows that, but can’t help herself. It’s a delicious little morsel of pain for her to indulge in.
“My cousin has a prescription and gave me some. What, did you think I’d buy a baggie off the street? Be serious.”
There is no point in going through the whole prescription abuse spiel because PTMC’s resident prodigy already knows. Instead of saying anything, she sinks down, leaning on the concrete beam so she can feel its cold seep into her raw skin. To her horror, her eyes burn hot, ripe with sudden tears. If God was kind, He would see Victoria’s lip peel back in disgust, turn on her heels, and walk away. But He is not. Instead, her eyes widen as she takes a tentative step forward.
“Are you crying?” Victoria asks, mouth gaping, ever subtle and suave. Trinity can’t blame her too much. Seeing her cry must be akin to seeing a mythical creature.
A hollow laugh echos from the cold concrete at her back, not her own lungs. “Not yet.”
For all her judgement and lack of social grace, Victoria is kind. She does try to sit next to her. But Trinity is a sinkhole with an undertow churning beneath the surface, waiting to drown anyone who dares slip nearby. The moment her shoulder makes contact, Trinity is suddenly seventeen in a beat to hell sedan in her best friends hoodie, and flinches away so hard Victoria jumps back up.
It’s Trinity’s turn to study the architecture. She can’t, or doesn’t want to, see the hurt she knows she’s about to paint on Victoria’s pretty face. “Can you just fuck off?”
Victoria does. Trinity stays seated until the sound of Victoria driving away has long faded.
Trinity blocks Doctor J, deletes her account, and the email she used to make it after all.
They avoid each other. Next time Trinity spots Victoria in the lockers, she turns tail and runs away. On shared cases, they make eye contact when strictly necessary and never, ever touch. In this non-existence, Trinity could convince herself that Victoria is a ghost burned into her retinas if she really tried hard enough. Better than the alternative.
She finally catches a moment to sit when she feels a buzz in her pocket. Fuck. She cannot catch up on these stupid charts to save her life. Her phone had been dry since the… thing with Victoria blew up, so she assumed it was either A), her mother doing her once-yearly check-in to not so subtly shame her for leaving her alone, which she would ignore out of principle, or B), her brother doing his weekly check-in, which she would ignore to avoid a pity party. Instead, there is a text message notification at the top of her phone from Victoria.
“I flushed the rest of it. It was stupid anyway.”
This she ignores, too, and doesn’t know why.
Trinity is blindsided when Cassie McKay pulls her into South 16, draws the curtain, and plants the question squarely in her face. It seems Switzerland has picked a side after all.
“What did you do to her?”
“Nothing.”
“Right, so she goes from cheerful student doctor to a moping puddle for ‘nothing’?” Cassie asks, scowling and looking rather pink. And pissed. And kind of hot.
She’s sinking to the bottom again. Cools her expression, clenches her jaw, waits for impact.
“No, don’t do that shit with me today, Trinity.”
Oh Christ.
Cassie continues, a dog with a bone, “I don’t need you to tell me what. I need you to fix things with her. What happened to the girl who was asking me if she was okay just a couple weeks ago?”
“She died.”
Cassie closes her eyes, pinches the bridge of her nose, and leaves, having dealt with enough tantrums from her actual child to know when to disengage. Trinity spends the rest of the day in a mood that rivals Robby’s, to the point the man himself checks her attitude with a look.
She still isn’t sure what exactly the breaking point is. It isn’t Robby or McKay. Trinity has never done anything because of someone else’s disappointment. Maybe she’s tired of having, and being, a ghost. She misses Victoria’s attention. And, God help her, she does care.
Trinity feels stupid when she pulls into the coffee shop parking lot at five thirty in the morning. Stupid while she waits in line. Especially stupid when she places her order. And completely mortified when she walks, early, into the PTMC locker room with it in her hand and waits.
Victoria enters twenty minutes before her shift is supposed to start like Trinity knows she would. She genuinely squeaks when she sees Trinity leaned against her locker and pivots. She takes one step back out the door.
“Hey, wait, please,” Trinity says.
Victoria does.
Trinity closes the gap and holds the drink out. A soymilk mocha cookie frappuccino with extra non-dairy whipped cream and shaved chocolate curls from the local coffee shop. Just like Trinity knows she likes, and only gets when Doctor Shamsi is not on shift to see her consume. She made sure to check the schedule.
“I have your cake in a cup,” Trinity tries for a laugh. Or offense. A reaction of any kind.
The urge to correct is irresistible to Victoria, like she hoped it would be. “I know what it is. And it’s a cookie, not a cake.”
Trinity bites her lip before saying the next part. “It’s an apology.”
Their fingers brush when Victoria takes it from her, slowly, like she is a mousetrap waiting to spring. Condensation had formed on the surface of the plastic and the beads of water smear from Trinity’s hand onto Victoria’s in a way that is far too intimate for the moment.
“This doesn’t just fix everything.”
“I know.”
“I still can’t believe you.”
“I know.”
The conversation floats in the air unfinished. But Victoria takes a sip before turning and opening her locker, so Trinity’s heart bursts and flips and skitters in her chest anyway.
A pair of doctors sit on a messy bedroom floor, criss-cross-apple sauce. Trinity pushes the DVD into the player. Behind the camera, Jas’ mom narrates while wrangling her youngest child on her hip. In the corner of the video, glimpses of pudgy fingers reach for the camera. She swats them away, then zooms in on Jas as she prepares for her first routine. A young Trinity fixes her hair where it came loose during warmups, then kicks her in the shin and tears off, Jasmine following on her heels.
“Wow, you look the same,” Victoria says, squinting at the screen. Her hair is down and she smells like roses this close. Patterns of light from the television dance on her skin.
“Hope not. I had braces.”
Victoria laughs in disbelief before delicately resting her fingers over Trinity’s, splayed out on her carpet. “You did not.”
Maybe one day she’d tell Victoria the rest - about him, about the note, about her whole life blowing to smithereens, about how she decided to become a doctor so she would never sit powerless at a bedside again. But not now. Now, Trinity just revels in the warm brush of Victoria’s fingertips on her knuckles and leans into her.
“Did too.”